This week's episode is an old school "monster of the week" episode, with very little of the overarching story involved, and I'm just fine with that! It's fun once in a while to get back to the format of earlier seasons and watch Sam and Dean just hunt down a random monster!

The monster in question is a banshee, and the show opens a number of years ago in Ireland and we meet a family made up of a mother, a father, and a baby girl. Everything seems okay until the father hears a shrieking sound. The mother, unable to hear it, wonders what's wrong until the father begins to bash his head against a wall and the banshee actually comes into the house. The mother races for a bowl and several herbs and such to cast a spell, but she is attacked. Meanwhile, the husband has bashed himself to death. The mother completes the spell and banishes the banshee, but not before it's too late. She's mortally wounded, the child is alone.

Smash cut to a modern day retirement village and we are greeted by a similar scene: a man and a woman are talking. The man hears the same shrieking sound we heard at the beginning of the show. The woman doesn't. The man throws himself against a window. The banshee appears, The man throws himself through the window to his death. And the show is off and running!

Unlike the previous episode, which was chock full of information and several plot lines, this one was really simple. It's just Sam and Dean investigating what might have killed this man, and I like that. There are a few twists (remember that baby from the beginning? She plays into it.) and we see what Lucifer (in Castiel's vessel) is up to (and his conversation with Dean relates to the overall story of the season) but beyond that, this is a nice one and done.

A-